The Triumphant Return of Worby Adventure Time in Japan

...or another really long, poorly written letter from across the world.

10/22/05

It finally seems as though autumn is settling in. The nights are pretty cold, but most of the leaves haven't turned yet. The Japanese love autumn leaves, cherry blossoms in spring, and other natural occurrences that remind us of the transience of life. It has been on the news here that it is "AUTUMN IN HOKKAIDO!!", the northernmost island of Japan. That's how much they enjoy it. But it seems as though actual autumn colors will have to wait until November.

This past couple weeks back in class have been a bit different. Now we only have Japanese three days a week, but also a Japanese culture class with Professor Hudson twice a week. One of the two days is usually spent traveling to nearby temples, shrines and other interesting places. Two weeks ago, we went to Nara. This past week we went to Uji, a small city near Kyoto. I got some great cards in the mail these last couple weeks - thanks, everyone! Also, it was remarked of last week's email that there was a shortage of "adventure time" scenarios, in which I get lost or something ridiculous happens. This week's email will hopefully make up for that.

The other week, I was a bit out of sorts. I was in a daze during class and put myself on cruise control all day. Of course, we all know that cruise control has its drawbacks, and there was no way I was going to steer clear of calamity for an entire week. And what better day for it to strike than my birthday? Master of timing that I am, this was going to be a birthday to remember.

I woke up Thursday morning like I always do, went downstairs and ate breakfast with the host fam. Daitaro flicked on the news, like he always does. I looked up at the screen and upon seeing that the date was "10/13", remembered that it was my birthday. Keiko had suggested kaiten zushi (remember? the rotating sushi place?) for dinner, which was an offer I had trouble turning down. I was definitely looking forward to that. Daitaro drove me to the station, as he usually does, and I did my usual commute thing to school. I wandered over to the library to meet everyone, like I always do, and that's when things went.............awry.

I walked into the computer terminal area where everyone usually hangs out in the morning, and had the feeling that something was kind of off. And by kind of off, I mean really off. Because none of them were there. I'm usually the last person to get to school, but I still thought, "hmm, maybe they're all running late?" I ran the possible scenarios through my head and realized that today was to be class with Professor Hudson. Oh well, I guess I did my Japanese homework a day early (yeah, that's how out of it I was). Did they all go to his apartment already, where we had class on Tuesday? Probably not. Did they go...somewhere...far away? Oh god, they went somewhere. Where did they go? I was drawing a blank.

My cell phone was out of minutes, so I used a public phone card I had bought for emergencies (like this) to call up Greg and find out what was going on. "where...are you?" he asked. "Where are YOU?" I asked in response. He kept asking me, so I finally let him know: "I'M AT THE SCHOOL, DAMN IT. WHERE SHOULD I BE?" I heard him slap himself the way he does when someone does something stupid and mutter something to some other people. The responses all sounded like a variety of "oh god, what an idiot". Then I finally asked the deadly question: "where....SHOULD I be?" And the inevitable response, "...Kyoto Station." "Ok, and where are we going?" "To Nara. To Horyuji. Remember?" I had a faint memory, but my concept of time was way off. More off than usual. I got off the phone and contemplated the best way to accomplish my new mission: get to Nara before next year. And that's how my birthday adventure began.

Around 9 am, when class usually starts, I took the bus back down South to Kyoto Station. By the time I got there, the train everyone else had taken had long since departed. By about an hour. I was not a happy customer, and now I had to figure out how to get Nara. Greg had given me instructions, but given that just about everything was in Japanese, I still had some figuring out to do. I finally confirmed what I thought was the right way with the station attendant, bought a ticket, and boarded the express train for Nara. Greg, being the solid guy that he is, called me again to tell me what to do and where to go. I was to meet them at Horyuji. He would call me again around the time I should be getting in. I felt bad for making him call me over and over, but I had no more minutes, so I had no choice. I looked for a Vodafone store to replenish my minutes on the way, but was out of luck.

I was still feeling a bit out of sorts on the train ride to Nara, and getting off to transfer to Horyuji, took a bit of time to determine which train I should take. I was getting a bit hungry at this point, but figured there was no helping it and hopped on the train for Horyuji. I ran through the morning's events in my head. What is wrong with me? I sighed and looked across the aisle to see a toddler's wide eyes staring me down. Her mother was sitting next to her, and smiled at me. She told the girl to say hello in English, but the little girl was shy. Not too shy to stare though. Being the confident, outgoing guy that I am, I decided to take the initiative and say hi. The mother, utterly surprised that I could speak Japanese, told her daughter to say "Konnichi wa". She still wouldn't budge. I realized then that I was making a stupid, fake smile because I felt like shit from the mistake I had made. I sighed and let the smile give way into the truth. The girl's entirely-too-adult face erupted in laughter. Even when they're babies, they're thoroughly entertained by my mistakes, I thought to myself. Despite my best efforts not to, I had to smile back at her. The little girl reached into her mother's bag and took out a little bag of snacks. Then, in an unprecedented turn of events, she reached across the aisle and offered it to me. I looked at her mother in shock, as if to say, "is this really Ok?" She nodded, so I bowed my head and graciously accepted the snack. The little girl got out another bag and we commenced snacking together. The mother asked her to ask me my name, but words were still too much for her. I told her that my name was Jess. Her mother said that her name was "Kitari", which meant something having to do with sunlight. That was probably the last straw for my sour mood. Here I was, having a snack with a little girl named Sunlight. What's a guy to do but let go? We all got off at Horyuji. Kitari made a big smile and finally opened her mouth for an emphatic "BYE BYE!!!", every Japanese girl's favorite English. I had to smile.

I got some more sustenance at the convenience store there, and followed Greg's instructions to take the bus to Horyuji. Though it's October, it was somehow somewhere around 90 degrees outside. My convenience store bought meat bun would not cool down. Thinking I would be in class, so I was wearing a warm, long-sleeve button-down with a t-shirt and jeans. What's more, I had my entire life in my backpack that day: my computer, textbook, workbook, my own reading, walkman, et cetera. That turned out to be a bit of pain, but I was done complaining at this point so I set off to explore Horyuji.

My plan was simple: look around until I see ten Americans. How hard can it be? It's just a temple, right? Wrong. Horyuji is a temple complex. It's gigantic compared to other places I've been. I wandered all over the complex, but could not enter some areas without a ticket. Huge conglomerate masses of Japanese school children chanted "HA-RO!" (hello) at me as I walked by. Finally, Greg called me to say that I should meet them at a part of the complex called the Yumedono. I found the place quickly, and waited. Greg called me again and asked where I was, to which I uttered the now famous, "I'm at the Yumedono. Where are you?" A couple minutes later, I finally saw them coming and walked out to meet them. By then it was a little after noon. Professor Hudson gave me a ticket to get into the special places and said that if I was quick I could meet them back at the Yumedono. Otherwise, I could meet them back at the MacDonald's by Nara Station. Everyone got there own little joke in about my mistake and they left to see the Yumedono.

So, there I was; on my own again. Horyuji was a very interesting temple complex; a tall pagoda, halls full of old Buddhist statues and artifacts. I took some cool pictures, but cameras were not permitted in some of the more interesting areas. There was a large Buddhist triad in the middle building that I stood in awe of for a bit. Then I got a text message from Greg saying that they had left the complex. After wandering around the rest of Horyuji, I went back to the bus stop to return to the train station. I sat down on the curb and took my bag off to relax for a moment. A funny-looking little old man smiled, nodded at me and sat down on the curb next to me. We had a silent exchange about being tired and wanting to sit down before a cab came and he got in. He nodded to me as he departed. My bus came soon after and I headed back to Nara.

After getting off at Nara, I saw no MacDonald's in sight. So, I did the unthinkable for a man and asked where it was. When I finally found everyone, sitting down in that most American of places, they all got one more joke in and finished their lunches. No rest for the weary; lunch time was over. It was time to see some more temples. We walked a good ways to Todaiji, which was a colossal Japanese-Baroque building with a gigantic Buddha known as the "daibutsu (great Buddha)" inside. It was so big that a string quartet had at one time played on its left hand. There was a hole in a pillar in the back of the building that was supposedly the same size as its nostril. Crawling through the hole was supposed to give one good luck. Lydia, being the skinniest in our group, undertook this task. Professor Hudson told us a story of a festival the Japanese had had at Todaiji some years ago. Aside from the string quartet, the monks apparently had barely dressed female dancers dancing in front of the Buddha. Of course, some people were outraged by this and asked the monks what was going on. The head monk replied that the great Buddha does not distinguish between male and female, clothed or unclothed. I found the mental image to be very Japanese.

From there, we went to Kofukuji, where there was a really cool collection of Buddhist art and artifacts. There were excellent renderings there of the Niou (two kings) or Deva Kings. They had fierce faces and muscular bodies, but with realistic proportions. All agreed that these statues were "bad-ass". From there, we walked to a very colorful shrine building of some sort, which was at the edge of the city. It being on a mountainside, there was a nice view of the city. Of course, my camera ran out of pictures before then. The monks there engage in a ritual where they run around the building holding huge torches aflame. It's unbelievable that they have never burned it down, seeing as it is entirely made out of wood. I rang the prayer bell there and we headed to the train station to head home. On the train ride home, I learned that new phone cards can be purchased at any convenience store, not just Vodafone, so when we got back to Kyoto I did just that. I boarded my train back to Takatsuki and then it hit me; I was supposed to go out for dinner with Keiko and Daitaro! It was getting late, so I gave them a call. I was too tired at that point to explain anything in Japanese, so what came out on the phone can be roughly translated as "Today was rough. I'm gonna be a little late." I finally got back and Keiko had made one of her normal meals of ton katsu (fried pork cutlet), onion tempura, with beef and of course rice. She said that since I had gotten back late, it would be better to eat at home.

So that was that adventure. The next one took place last Monday, I think it was, when our class was supposed to have a meeting with Japanese students from the English Speaking Society (ESS) at Ritsumeikan University. Did I remember there was to be this meeting? Of course not. But that's not as big a matter this time around. Apparently there was a bit of a misunderstanding with our meeting: it was never going to be at our school, it was at theirs. What's more, Professor Hudson got a letter the day of the meeting saying that the time had been changed from 1:30 to 4 PM. After a large amount of bitching and moaning from the group, only five of us wound up going. At 4 PM, we took the bus to Ritsumeikan and met with Makoto, one of the heads of the ESS at the bus stop. He took us to the campus, where there were a ton of Japanese college students. So this is where they've been hiding, I thought. We didn't know what to expect from the meeting, so when they wrote out an organized schedule running until 8 pm on the board I wasn't entirely surprised. We originally planned to leave around 6 in order to get back and do work, but we all decided to skim that night's reading and see what kind of experience this would be. I called Keiko to tell her I would be late again. We and a few other foreign exchange students were to be spread amongst the English Speaking Society, which took up about five classrooms. I and a guy from Toronto named Richard were put in one classroom together, which coincidentally was the same one that Makoto was leading. There were about 10 students in the room at first, each with a name tag that said their name in English. Richard and I also helped ourselves to these, and thus the fun began.

Our first project was to do a three person dialog in English on one of three topics: "cooking", "drinking" and "boring". I chose to chuckle at the last one rather than go to the trouble of correcting it. Explaining an error in parallelism might have been a bit tough in Japanese. My group, which consisted of me, a guy who habitually scratched himself who everyone called Shin-chan, and a very dorky, happy-go-lucky girl named Keiko, were to do a skit about drinking. There were several phrases on the board that we had to incorporate into our dialog. The ones I remember are "...end up doing", "go have a drink", and "waste of time". The skit wound up being my brainchild entirely as the other two spoke even less English than my host parents. It somehow wound up being about me asking Kei to go out for a drink, but then Shin-chan saying that she needs to go do homework with him, and then an argument ensuing, with me eventually saying that I have an abundance of beer and her agreeing that drinking is fun. Typical college dialog. Ok, maybe a little different, but close enough. All of the dialogs were pretty funny, whether or not they intended to be, and it broke the ice a bit.

The next thing we did they called "Fruits Basket", which is something like musical chairs. The person without a chair says, for example "everyone wearing blue stand up" and everyone wearing blue has to find a different chair to sit in. Makoto added a touch to this, making it so that the person without a chair had to talk about one of several topics that he had written on the board (your favorite thing, your hometown, love, etc.). All of them had to speak in English, but I had to do it in Japanese. Richard left at this point, making me the only foreigner in the room. It didn't take long for the game to break the ice even further, however, and everyone became very loose thereafter. Also, Hide (hee-day) and Seichan (say-chahn), two guys from another campus of Ritsumeikan joined us at this point, who turned out to be pretty entertaining. Upon entering the room, Hide exclaimed in English that Seichan was crazy, but Seichan responded that "this guy...he is ichiban (the most) crazy!" which made us all laugh. Turns out Hide actually was ichiban crazy. He spent the entire time making strange faces with his eyes rolled back into his head and trying to make me believe he was gay when he obviously wasn't. The game turned out to be a laugh riot. I could hear the uproarious laughter echoing from the other rooms as well. Talking about yourself, and also speaking to strangers in their native tongue can be pretty humorous. The high point for my room probably came at the beginning when I was left without a chair, and the topic that we were up to was, for the first time, "love". This brought all of them nearly to tears laughing - that this funny foreigner had to tell them something about his love life. In Japanese, no less. Seichan spent the rest of the game chanting "LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!" whenever anyone was about to speak. Hide confessed his love to another guy who wore rainbow glasses, whom Hide had apparently attacked at summer camp. They seemed to be just joking around, but I couldn't tell whether Hide actually attacked the guy or just kind of messed with him a little. Either way it was funny. They also made a point of telling me that Makoto's girlfriend, named Yurika, was called Yurika-hime (Princess Yurika) because she was very pretty. At one point, everyone who had ever dyed their hair had to stand up, and Seichan commented to me that guys like us, who never dyed their hair, were "ii otoko (literally, good guys)". I said that I agreed. Ii otoko seems like it has more meaning than just "good guy". Knowing the Japanese love of understatement, saying that you're ii otoko can probably mean something more along the lines of being "awesome". Seichan's crowning moment came when he was asked to say what he doesn't like about himself. He said, "Nothing. Because I am ii otoko!" which was absolutely hilarious at the time.

At the end of the game, some more people came in, one of whom was a short girl with braces who spoke almost perfect English. She was extremely irritating, however. She spoke over everyone and said "yeah! yeah!" every five seconds. After the game, we all went together to the school cafeteria, where Seichan insisted on treating me to dinner (on his meal card). The food there was also better than that of an American cafeteria. At dinner, Makoto explained to me that he wants to learn English because he likes a lot of American music, his favorite band being Nirvana. No one else had heard of Nirvana besides him. He alone had heard of the more popular bands that I like, and when I listed off The Pillows, a Japanese band, once again only Makoto had heard of them. I had a classic English-to-Japanese misunderstanding with Seichan during dinner. I asked him in Japanese where Hide had gone, meaning "I wonder where Hide is", but he took it as meaning, "Go! Run and find Hide!" so he jumped up before I could say anything and ran around looking for him. Turns out he had gone home. After dinner, we thanked them for a great time, and were on our way. We are going back for an "overnight" in a week or two. Everyone involved thought the idea was ridiculous, but we are going through with it all the same. It struck me that Japanese college students may not know what Beirut is (not the city), so that should be a good time.

It was definitely good to finally meet some Japanese people my age - that has definitely been lacking so far this trip. Seeing the sights is great, but as I stated in a previous email, I think that meeting the people is a large part of learning about any country. It's one thing to converse with other generations, but there is something about talking with a contemporary that is much more comfortable. You get to see in closer detail how people are different/similar in a foreign country. I probably sound like an old woman when I speak Japanese right now, due to the fact that the person I talk most with is Keiko. She barely understands some of the language that younger people use. I guess some things are the same wherever you go.

For the latter half of Professor Hudson's Tuesday class, we walked to a nearby temple/shrine which I believe is called Tanuki Danna-ji. It is near the foot of Mt. Hiei, where the famous monk Saichoh founded the Japanese sect of Tendai Buddhism in 788 CE. There was a statue of him on the way up to the main temple. He wore a traditional pilgrim's hat, carried a Buddhist prayer staff, carried a straw mat on his back to sleep on, a cup for begging (I think), chopsticks, and wore a traditional monk's robes and straw sandals. Nothing more. That was his entire life (minus his writing), and even that probably seemed like too much material possession to him. At the very bottom of the slope leading up to the temple was a small Shinto shrine and representations of the seven Shinto gods of fortune. Modern Japanese people do not find it contradictory to put a Shinto shrine on the grounds of a Buddhist temple. What's more, the Hanshin Tigers baseball team had come to pray at that temple in 2003, so when they won the Japan Series they installed a plaque at the foot of the slope. People came there this year, too, to pray for victory, and put little inflatable Hanshin bats around the plaque.

Farther up the slope was a small building that was a representation of one of the 88 temples on the Shikoku pilgrimage. It was surrounded, I believe, by the 17 or 18 arhats. The 88 temples of Shikoku have been represented around Mt. Hiei for those who don't have the time to go all the way around the island of Shikoku to do the pilgrimage. Several Colgate students have done it in its entirety, and a few members of our group considered doing it instead of the last month of our scheduled program. Most Japanese people do the pilgrimage in segments, or by bus. However, Colgate students have a long history of doing the pilgrimage the old fashioned way: by walking the entire thing in traditional pilgrim's garb (robe, sandals, big straw pilgrim hat) and begging for food as a means of getting by. During our hike up Atago-san, Professor Hudson told us the story about one guy from Colgate who had vanished during the pilgrimage. His family phoned authorities all over the place, and it eventually came out that a foreigner had been holing out in a graveyard in Shikoku for three weeks. This turned out to be the right guy. The blisters on his feet had gotten so bad that he was unable to walk anymore, and so stopped for three weeks until they got better. A kindly old woman from a nearby house made him meals and brought them to him every day. After three weeks, he was asked if he wanted to go home, but he refused, and finished the pilgrimage a couple weeks later. It was this story that made some members of our group want to do the pilgrimage. I and a couple others are still considering doing it at some point in the future.

The temple itself had actually been changed into a practical meeting place. There were lots of tanuki statues outside the temple. Tanuki are interesting - their closest American relative is the badger. Shinto sculptures depict them with huge balls, a sombrero-like straw hat, a big jug of sake, and an enigmatic smile. Don't ask me what it all means. The way to the main building was divided in two: one for women and the other for men. There was a great view of Kyoto from the temple. The path used to extend up past the temple towards Mt. Hiei, but it has since been overgrown. Small temples like this one, which barely anyone knows about, can be a lot nicer than the more famous ones, in some ways. It was very quiet and there were few people around. Overall, a nice little hike.

I had a long conversation with Professor Hudson after class that day about this and that, which began with me asking him to reimburse me for train fare (you wouldn't think that would lead to a discussion, would you?) and ended due to the fact that my stomach was grumbling. The two of us could probably talk for days on end, but I was hungry and a little preoccupied with work and what not. So he recommended I go to a chain ramen shop named Tenka Ippin (The World's One Excellence?), that was right down the street from his apartment and school. It has since become a favorite spot of mine. Ramen broth, I just learned, comes in koteri (thick), and asari (thin), which is the brown broth that is generally the norm. I love koteri, and order my ramen there with that and some ninniku (garlic). It is one tasty dish that I will miss when I come back home.

This Thursday was our second class trip. I was congratulated heartily (and sarcastically) on making it to the meeting point. This time, we went to Uji, a small city right outside of Southeast Kyoto. Uji is famous for its green tea. Legend has it that when Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Nobunaga Oda were riding around the countryside, they checked everywhere they went to see which water was best for making green tea. Hideyoshi purportedly decided that Uji's was the most delicious, so its fame is still known to this day. There are various kinds of green tea: matcha, sencha, the more ordinary bancha and probably several other varieties. Within those categories there are many more categorizations, such as leafy or not leafy. I had a sample of some matcha in a shop, and it was absolutely delicious. They also serve Cha zoba (green-tea soba), the noodles of which are green, and other dishes there which were made with matcha leaves in the mixture. I may soon come up with an excuse to visit my friend Joe in Uji and have some cha zoba, as it looked delicious and we didn't have lunch there.

Munchies aside, our primary reason for going to Uji was to see Byodo-in, a famous Buddhist temple. The main attraction there is a small building that is on the back of the 10 yen coin. It is called the Phoenix Hall in English due to the two birds on the roof. The Phoenix Hall is, I believe, the only building still standing as it originally was from the Heian Period. It is a very cool building. Horyuji and some other temples we have seen have been repainted in recent years, but Byodo-in has not. Thus, it still looks completely natural and has acquired some patina. You can still see the bold colors that were used, but it doesn't look fake. It almost seems as though it was meant to be seen this way. The Phoenix Hall got its name for one other reason: it seems to be shaped like a bird. A large Amida (Amitabha) Buddha statue is housed in the center part of the building, but the two outer segments are actually unusable. You can walk under them to get to the main building, but even a midget would not be able to fit in the crawl space between their upper lower portions. The wings were made for extensively aesthetic reasons, which is very Heian. The Heian Period was the time of The Tale of Genji, that world famous 1000-page (more? was that the abridged version?) novel written by Lady Murasaki about Japanese court life in that time. The novel (more like a tome) is the best history of the period that we currently have as a resource, with Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book, another novel written by a Heian woman about court life, coming in second. It was a time in which one's status was nearly determined (outside of one's family) by how good a poet one was. The nobles of this time have been called "the cult of beauty", because they didn't seem concerned with much else. Of course, this era eventually gave way to the age of the samurai, in which the pen was definitely not mightier than the sword, "but we digress" (remember that, Bec? Sam?). We were given a long drawn out explanation about the nature of the Amidha Buddha in the Phoenix Hall, which was sculpted by a famous artist in the Heian Period named Jocho. The explanation was in fast, complex Japanese, however, so all I learned about it was "Fujiwara... Jocho... Amida Buddha... arigato gozaimasu." Byodo-in also had a small museum with some interesting Buddhist artifacts. There were a couple of phoenix sculptures, and a lot of sculptures of the Worshipping Bodhisattva on a Cloud, for which Byodo-in is famous. The Amidha Buddha used to be surrounded by many of these small Bodhisattva sculptures. The museum was very modern, which was an interesting contrast to the ancient Phoenix Hall.

After Byodo-in, we went to an Obaku Zen temple. The other two types of Zen, Rinzai and Soto, are more popular, but Obaku has become more popular with Japanese businessmen in recent years since the Obaku Buddha seems to have merged identities in Japan with Hotei, one of the seven Shinto gods of luck. Hotei specifically is the god of monetary fortune. He looks like the fat happy Buddha you often see in Chinese restaurants, though I am not sure if they are the same (no, not all Buddhas look like that). It was an interesting little complex. Very Chinese - symmetrical, for one thing. We saw a lot of monks in more reform outfits, like a normal monk's robe under a sport jacket and some leather shoes. This seems to be typical of Obaku Zen "business monks". I thought it was silly. In the main chamber of the temple grounds was a large shrine to the Buddha, surrounded by 17 or 18 Arhats, other heavenly beings (I forget exactly what they are). The shrine was very interesting looking - bold colors that are generally not used in Japanese Buddhist shrines. Upon leaving, we saw a suzumebachi, a giant, poisonous black and orange bee. I don't know if it is actually a killer bee, but I heard an interesting story about what these things can do. Sometimes one or two suzumebachi will crash a bumble bee nest and absolutely wreak havoc. The bumble bees are so defenseless that their only way to emerge victorious over a suzumebachi is for a lot of them to latch onto one and vibrate so much that they raise the suzumebachi's body temperature until it dies. Extremely insufficient, but pretty hardcore.

My other exploit this week was Jidai Matsuri (Festival of the Ages), that I just went to today. A long line of samurai, geisha, palanquin carriers and everything in between walked down the street from the Imperial Palace to Heian Shrine. It was pretty interesting to see so many people decked out in ancient garb. Occasionally there would be one guy who would look as though he had been born in the wrong era because he made such a believable samurai, but to balance him out there would be some guy wearing Nikes with kimono. There was one funny guy who was chanting something and leading some palanquin carriers. He stopped and made jokes with the crowd whenever the going was slow. It was an interesting parade. So that's the news. Hope life is treating all of you well.

Love and Peace,
Jess

10/23 edit: My host family is renting a small Yahoo! hub so they can use the internet. It gives off a wireless signal that I can pick up in my room, but for some reason it won't let me onto the network (even with their password). So I may have more access to internet in the near future. However, I was unable to figure out how to correctly ask in Japanese whether the internet hub they are renting is pay-as-you-go, or one fee for a month, so I don't know how often I would be able to use it anyway.

anther edit: Keiko and I just tried to figure out how to get me onto their internet provider, but it was fruitless. We called up tech support, but ran into an interesting problem: I knew things about computers, but not in Japanese. Keiko knew the Japanese, but not about computers. It was the blind leading the blind either way we tried to talk to the guy. We just now gave up because it was taking way too much time and effort. She said she would make ramen for lunch, which brought a smile to my face.